Putting parents on trial in child's death proves difficult

Feb. 21, 2013

Updated 1:17 p.m.

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Seal Beach police officer David S. Barr, Jr. sits in his patrol car outside the Sea Breeze Village military housing area of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station where he worked on a baby death case. Barr finds baby death cases to be some of the hardest to work on. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Booking photo of Juana Perez Valencia, who was convicted of suffocating a full-term baby girl after secretly giving birth and dumping the newborn into a trash can on Dec. 22, 2009. ORANGE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY

Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh is a top prosecutor in Orange County. “We actually sleep much better at night when we convince ourselves that a mother or father will never kill their child,” he said. JEBB HARRIS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Defense attorney Calvin Schneider in an O.C. Superior Courtroom in 2012. "When (jurors) come in to the courtroom and see the parent sitting there and then they see horrific injuries due to neglect or intentional abuse, look out," Schneider said. "They're going to really come after a parent at that point. There's no mercy at that point." EUGENE GARCIA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sonia Hermosillo's attorney Jacqueline Goodman, shown here in a 2010 press conference on another case, says the 32-year-old mother from La Habra was a “phenomenal mother and phenomenal wife” who was and still is suffering from a little understood mental illness. ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Seal Beach police officer David S. Barr, Jr. sits in his patrol car outside the Sea Breeze Village military housing area of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station where he worked on a baby death case. Barr finds baby death cases to be some of the hardest to work on. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

SANTA ANA – She cut a diminutive figure, hardly visible alongside the other inmates in holding cages at the farthest end of a cavernous Orange County courtroom.

At an appearance last month where Sonia Hermosillo pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges that she murdered her disabled infant son by tossing him from the fourth floor of a hospital parking structure, she spoke softly through a Spanish interpreter and nodded when a judge asked a question.

Hermosillo's attorney Jacqueline Goodman says the 32-year-old from La Habra was a "phenomenal mother and phenomenal wife" who was and still is suffering from a little understood mental illness.

From Orange County prosecutor Scott Simmons' point of view, the defendant may have been a decent mother to her other two kids but not to 7-month-old Noe, whom he says she deliberately pushed to his death because she did not want to take care of the infant.

Hermosillo, who will be back in court Friday for a hearing, will take center stage when she sits at the defense table during her trial later this year with jurors mulling, once again, the fate of a parent accused of taking the life of her own child.

Defense attorneys contend that is a fleeting feeling with jurors soon looking to blame somebody for a child's killing, parent or not. Experts say such cases are hard for both sides, with neither usually getting everything it wants in court.

"It's very difficult from a D.A.'s perspective to reach first-degree murder, for them to get a jury to go all the way," said Roberto Flores de Apodaca, an expert in forensic psychology who testifies for both sides in cases where a parent is accused of killing a child.

"It's also very difficult for the defense to get an acquittal. ... My impression is that a lot of juries settle for a conviction; it's usually something that neither side argued for, it's kind of a compromise," he said.

Hermosillo is not alone.

Killed newborn

An Orange County jury in September found that moments after secretly giving birth in 2009 to a 6.3-pound, 17-inch baby girl in the restroom of a Stanton restaurant, Juana Perez Valencia, 21, killed her baby.

At her first trial, a jury could not reach a verdict when Valencia was charged with first-degree murder.

Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh retried her on charges of second-degree murder and felony assault. The jury convicted on both.

"We actually sleep much better at night when we convince ourselves that a mother or father will never kill their child," Baytieh said. "Nobody would ever say a gang member would only kill if they were mentally ill."

But with cases involving parents charged with killing their babies, that's where people start, he said.

Jurors quickly overcome societal conditioning that parents are supposed to protect their children when they see images of a dead, defenseless baby, said Perez's attorney Calvin Schneider, who argued Valencia's baby died during unassisted birth.

"When (jurors) come in to the courtroom and see the parent sitting there and then they see horrific injuries due to neglect or intentional abuse, look out," Schneider said. "They're going to really come after a parent at that point. There's no mercy at that point."

Justice for the child

Deputy District Attorney Simmons, who recently won a conviction in the case of another mother, Linda Wilborn of Seal Beach, accused of killing her 23-month-old daughter, is also prosecuting Hermosillo.

Seal Beach Detective Cpl. David Barr Jr. and two of his fellow detectives investigated the Wilborn case in which Simmons argued the mother squeezed and then slammed the toddler on a hard surface.

A conviction in the Wilborn case was a big win for Barr's 30-member department with only three detectives, who also helped prosecute Wilborn's husband, Derrick Wilborn, a U.S. Army recruiter, via military court. He was court-martialed for his role in the death of young Millicent.

The detectives also participated in civil proceedings that led to the adoption of the Wilborns' other three children.

"Any time you have a child at the center of (a crime), you really take on the desire to see justice for the child," Barr said.

Simmons explains what makes child death cases unique is that the parents involved don't necessarily intend to kill their children with premeditation and deliberation, which are prerequisites to proving first-degree murder.

"I think that most jurors don't want to believe that the parent will purposely kill their child," he said.

Prosecutors typically file dual charges of murder and assault on a child causing death. First-degree murder is psychologically a huge hurdle to overcome in such cases, and the alternate charges produce the same level of punishment – 25 years to life in prison.

For a second-degree murder, prosecutors argue "that even if (parents) did not intend to kill the child, their act was in conscious disregard for human life," Simmons said.

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